Handing down a family tradition

Wednesday 26 July 2000 11.19 EDT
First published on Wednesday 26 July 2000 11.19 EDT

Last Thursday I became 40 years old. It is an age for calm reflection, for taking stock. So I began the day by gathering up my nearly-two-year-old Estelle, throwing her onto the sofa and torturing her until she could take no more.

"Come on, now! Out with it!" I demanded, digging my fingertips into her ribs and wiggling them about. "Are you a ticklish little girl?" She giggled madly and shrieked: "Dada! Dada!"

"I must warn you, Miss Stone, that resistance is futile! I repeat: are you a ticklish little girl?"

I tickled and tickled and tickled: terrible, merciless tickling, and with cruel variations too. Sometimes I'd suddenly stop tickling, raise my fingers above her in a ready-to-tickle position, growl like an agitated Yorkshire terrier - or maybe a Scottish one, I never can decide - then, after letting the tension rise to an unbearable peak, launch myself into further tickling, making Estelle squeal with delight.

Other times I simply feigned these wicked lunges and instead of resuming tickling planted a huge, rude raspberry upon her tummy, hoping that, in her helplessness, she wouldn't pee on the upholstery.

"I give you this stern pledge, Miss Stone: if there is ticklishness in this house, I won't rest until it's rooted out!"

How we adore this stupid game, though not for wholly the same reasons. Of course, it's mostly an expression of her total trust in me, my sheer delight in her, our excited exploration of a shared sense of the sensual, the scary, the absurd and - should it need pointing out - an expression of our deep mutual love.

But while Estelle experiences Tickling Terror as a hysterical adventure, for me it is piquantly nostalgic.

Tickling Terror is a family tradition, one of several I'm determined to preserve. Others include the handing down of those few sentimental items of children's clothing that Dilys, my dear ex, didn't abscond with when she left me for the atrocious Chris the Pillock; and the stern ejection of monsters discovered hiding in tots' wardrobes come bedtime.

Gloria, my eldest, was especially taken with this last one when she was about four, joining in excitedly as I stood there, hand on hip, wagging my index finger at imaginary trolls and tigers lurking among the frocks and socks, and insisting that they disperse into the garden ("I've told you before: this is no place for beasties with big teeth. And close the door behind you!").

Dilys used to enjoy this kind of nonsense, too, though she'd never admit it now, being utterly insistent that no man alive is more fluently conversant with his Inner Infant than Chris. According to Jed and Billy, she even boasts that he has a pedigree as a children's performer - believing that improvised street theatre is a form of entertainment rather than a reason to give fellows such as Chris the sort of big red nose that requires medical attention.

Being spinned against by Dilys in this abysmal way makes conventions such as Tickling Terror even more important, a bridge between part-time siblings and, most importantly, a reminder that they all have the same one-and-only father who can actually, at times, be a happy, laughing guy.

Gloria, being 12, is too old for such frivolity now - not to mention too resoundingly sententious - but the bubbling Billy, four, and even the unreachable Jed, eight, can still be brought to snorting, writhing, loving-it submission if caught unawares and in the right frame of mind.

So, as I enter middle age, I slowly realise that my tickling of Estelle serves many a subtle purpose. It's not only a bit of boisterous, bonding pleasure between her and me but also an act of consolidation, an assertion of the link between a turbulent present and a flawed yet valuable past that's under siege.

In knowing that Tickling Terror is visited upon their part-time little sister just as it's been visited on them for years, Gloria, Jed and Billy may know that she has inherited a fragment of their history that lives on, despite the best efforts of Dilys to make it disappear.